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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439335">comeuppance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/antinomian/pseuds/antinomian'>antinomian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Downton Abbey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Implied/Referenced Suicide, Permanent Injury, Survivor Guilt, World War I, me writing be like: NO plot!!! ONLY internal narration, once again spitting out something vaguely moody and held together with string</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:28:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25439335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/antinomian/pseuds/antinomian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>he thinks he deserves what he gets, when it comes right down to it</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>comeuppance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i stg i couldnt write anything for like a month and then one night i finally dared to complain about it to my friend and immediately possessed i opened my notes app and wrote 700 words in half an hour and then fell asleep and when i woke up i didnt know how to finish it and eventually it turned into this. its kinda falling apart but its something i guess</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It had hurt when he first got it. He remembers this intellectually, not emotionally; he remembers rubbing ointment on it every morning and night, how the skin had been angry red under the bandages, how he could hardly lift a book in it, but he does not remember the pain but that it was there. He remembers thinking determinedly </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is the cost of my life</span>
  </em>
  <span> and ruefully </span>
  <em>
    <span>this is my comeuppance</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was not.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In time the wound had faded, first to pearly pink and later to white. He had been told he was pale since he could remember it, but even against his skin the scar was stark. It did not make it any less ugly, though; the worst thing about it was it's texture, pitted and puckered and stretched. He would wear the glove for the rest of his life, even in private where he was in so many other ways different.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a while, after it "healed," he was able to forget it had ever been hurt, or indeed that his hand had changed at all. Sometimes he forgot that his hand was scarred, and others he forgot that it ever hadn't been, and mostly he didn't have to think about it because it didn't hurt anymore. The last two fingers no longer bent, but it was okay. He was fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the beginning it would only ache faintly in the bitterest edge of winter, when snow soaked his coat and black ice cracked beneath his feet. He would wake before the hall boy came round to bang upon the doors and his room would be pitch black, dawn still hours away. He might smoke a cigarette to warm himself up, but he would always end up opening the window to breathe the stinging air. Leaning against the sill, he would look out over the dark hills draped in fog all blacks and blues before the sunlight turned it to glitter and blaze, and his hand would ache dully from the inside out. He could never quite move it right, after, but only then did he start to feel how the bones inside had stayed as ugly as his skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn't matter. He could still carry, and serve, and it wasn't his writing hand; he still had a job. But every winter the ache took a little longer to massage back to manageable, stayed another week. He tried not to think too much of it, as in the rest of the year, but as it became worse he grew to resent the wound as he hadn't since he first got it, when it had hurt from healing and he had worried that others might wonder how he had come to have been shot straight through the palm of his non-dominant hand.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was healing no longer, but it still hurt, and no one had asked about it, whether they were wondering or not. Maybe they thought it was the least of his sins and didn't really matter. Maybe they didn't want to cause a scene or scandal. Maybe (though this seemed to him unlikely) they did not blame him for what he did.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Later it would hurt when it rained, or was going to. He hated that more than anything, because it made him feel old, on top of Everything Else. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel's back, and maybe it was another of the hundred and two things, but he broke either way, and then after that he had more scars to be concerned with people seeing, and even less left to the imagination.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ache was worse after that, too. His blood circulation was poorer, and his grip was weaker, and it wasn't only in the wet and cold that the ache came, but any time it pleased, seemed like.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he finally showed it to Richard, he was prickling with shame and feeling like he was ruining things for himself as he always did. Richard, because he was so good, took his hand between his own and kissed the marred palm gently. Thomas said, "I did it on purpose. I struck my lighter one night and held it up over edge until they shot me," because some part of him did not believe that he could have anything without ruining it for himself so he might as well get it out of the way before he got used to it. Richard knew what he meant anyways.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Wish I'd been as brave," he said, and, well, what could Thomas possibly say to that? “Does it still hurt?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sometimes,” he’d replied, but as time went on that seemed more and more like an evasive understatement to his own ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He took to soaking his hand in warm water in the mornings, and then the evenings, too, and that helped some. When he had a cup of tea he would hold it by the body in his left hand even while it sat in the saucer, trying to absorb the heat through his glove. His hands were always cold now, anyways, and that was his fault too, wasn’t it? He hadn’t thought there’d be consequences beyond the obvious to slitting his wrists, or maybe he just hadn’t thought he’d be the one who had to deal with them, but either way they were with him now and not likely to leave, if the blighty was any indicator.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As time went on he felt more and more like his body was dying around him and he was trapped within it, a captive audience to his own decay. Other aches bloomed, expected ones, and at his temples his hair settled streaks of silver, and at his middle he began to show his fondness of chocolate cake, and these he could stomach because they were defensible. Normal. Not his fault. His hands were another matter entirely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They grew colder as time went on, and the ache in his left more forceful. It would cramp and seize up if he used it too much, and he could hardly hate it because at the least it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> feeling; anything was better than the numbness. He could no longer forget.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It felt like a punishment, that two of his greatest shames should shadow the rest of his life. Maybe it was.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i really hope this communicates what i wanted. i dont think it does but i hope</p></blockquote></div></div>
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